Foreign Cultural Programme - I, CULTURE

The concept and implementation: Adam Mickiewicz Institute in cooperation with Polish Institutes, Embassies of Poland and local partners

The Foreign Cultural Programme of Polish Presidency 2011, named I, CULTURE, is the biggest Adam Mickiewicz Institute's programme of promoting Polish culture abroad ever. The aim of the Programme is to present Poland as a creative basin of Europe – a modern and unique country with rich and creative contemporary culture.

Projects prepared by the Institute in cooperation with national and foreign partners will be presented in the best galleries and clubs and on the best stages and festivals in Berlin, Brussels, London, Madrid, Paris, Kyiv, Minsk, Moscow, Beijing and Tokio. Among local partners of the Institute there are e.g. BOZAR and La Monnaie in Brussels, National Theater and Southbank Centre in London, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, Teatro Real in Madrid and Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing.

Leading projects common for all cities and smaller projects corresponding with the cultural specificities of the given area

I, CULTURE– six key projects – pillars of the programme:

Karol Szymanowski – the most prominent Polish composer after Frederic Chopin. His artworks are being more and more willingly performed by outstanding musicians and opera artists, e.g. Valery Gergiev, David Pountney and Mariusz Trelinski. The programme includes concerts and chamber performances of the composer’s music as well as the opera King Roger – considered as one of the most modern operas of the beginning of the twentieth century.

Stanisław Lem – called J.S. Bach of the twentieth century’s literature by ‘The New York Times’, a visionary and largely an author of contemporary civilization. The main event of the programme is an avant-garde outdoor spectacle Planet Lem, based on the Lem’s proze and prepared by Teatr Biuro Podróży. Lem is the most willingly translated Polish writer and an author whose output inspires many outstanding film makers, e.g. Andrei Tarkovsky, Steven Soderbergh (Solaris) or Ari Folman who has already started shooting the photos for the Futurological Congress.

Czesław Miłosz– one of the three Polish Nobel prize winners for literature. On the occasion of the Presidency an unique audiobook with Miłosz’s poems read in dozens of languages by world-famous theater and film stars will be published. The Year 2011 is also a year of Czesław Miłosz in Poland. The first Polish Presidency symbolically coincides with the 100th anniversary of the birth of the author of ‘Family Europe’.

Guide to the Poles – a series of documentary films which tells stories about contemporary Polish society in an interesting and original way. The modern history of Poland and Poles is shown by rock music, fashion, games and toys, trips to Himalayas and sexual customs. One of the films is directed by Bartek Konopka who was an Oscar nominee.

An interactive multimedia Project in the public space I, Culture – the project will connect its participants in 10 capitals of the Foreign Cultural Programme and, additionally, in Warsaw and Copenhagen. Animated during following happenings by a Polish artist Monika Jakubiak, particpants will sew in each city a giant puzzle made of fabric. The creation of following puzzles and building the pattern will be tracked on the Internet.

I, CULTURE Orchestra – an unique and innovative music project. The Orchestra's members are young musicians from Poland and Eastern Partnership's countries (Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia). International experiences in creation of such teams, e.g. West - Eastern Divan Orchestra, prove that they give an unussual opportunity for professional development and making contacts as well as they have a big social and political potencial.

More about the Programme on the web portal culture.pl, which will be the official information service presenting the National and the Foreign Cultural Programme during Polish Presidency.